which John Albert Granger Barker wrote in my album. He has a most
fascinating lisp when he talks, so she says this is the way the verse
reads:
"Beauty of perthon, ith thertainly chawming
Beauty of feachure, by no meanth alawming
But give me in pwefrence, beauty of mind,
Or give me Cawwie, with all thwee combined."
It takes Anna to find "amuthement" in "evewything."
Mary Wheeler came over and pierced my ears to-day, so I can wear my new
earrings that Uncle Edward sent me. She pinched my ear until it was numb
and then pulled a needle through, threaded with silk. Anna would not
stay in the room. She wants hers done but does not dare. It is all the
fashion for girls to cut off their hair and friz it. Anna and I have cut
off ours and Bessie Seymour got me to cut off her lovely long hair
to-day. It won't be very comfortable for us to sleep with curl papers
all over our heads, but we must do it now. I wanted my new dress waist
which Miss Rosewarne is making, to hook up in front, but Grandmother
said I would have to wear it that way all the rest of my life so I had
better be content to hook it in the back a little longer. She said when
Aunt Glorianna was married, in 1848, it was the fashion for grown up
women to have their waists fastened in the back, so the bride had hers
made that way but she thought it was a very foolish and inconvenient
fashion. It is nice, though, to dress in style and look like other
people. I have a Garibaldi waist and a Zouave jacket and a balmoral
skirt.
_Sunday_.--I asked Grandmother if I could write a letter to Father
to-day, and she said I could begin it and tell him that I went to church
and what Mr. Daggett's text was and then finish it to-morrow. I did so,
but I wish I could do it all after I began. She said a verse from the
Tract Primer:
"A Sabbath well spent brings a week of content
And strength for the toil of to-morrow,
But a Sabbath profaned, whatever be gained,
Is a certain forerunner of sorrow."
_Monday_.--We dressed up in new fangled costumes to-day and wore them to
school. Some of us wore dresses almost up to our knees and some wore
them trailing on the ground. Some wore their hair twisted in knots and
some let theirs hang down their backs. I wore my new waterfall for the
first time and Abbie Clark said I looked like "Hagar in the Wilderness."
When she came in she looked like a fashion plate, bedecked with bows and
ribbons and her hair up in a new way. When she came in the door she
stopped and said solemnly: "If you have tears prepare to shed them now!"
Laura Chapin would not participate in the fun, for once. She said she
thought "Beauty unadorned was the dorndest." We did not have our lesson
in mental philosophy very well so we asked Mr. Richards to explain the
nature of dreams and their cause and effect. He gave us a very
interesting talk, which occupied the whole hour. We listened with
breathless attention, so he must have marked us 100.
There was a lecture at the seminary to-night and Rev. Dr. Hibbard, the
Methodist minister, who lives next door above the Methodist church, came
home with us. Grandmother was very much pleased when we told her.
_March_ 1.--Our hired man has started a hot bed and we went down behind
the barn to see it. Grandfather said he was up at 6 o'clock and walked
up as far as Mr. Greig's lions and back again for exercise before
breakfast. He seems to have the bloom of youth on his face as a reward.
Anna says she saw "Bloom of youth" advertised in the drug store and she
is going to buy some. I know Grandmother won't let her for it would be
like "taking coal to Newcastle."
_April._--Anna wanted me to help her write a composition last night, and
we decided to write on "Old Journals," so we got hers and mine both out
and made selections and then she copied them. When we were on our way to
school this morning we met Mr. E. M. Morse and Anna asked him if he did
not want to read her composition that Carrie wrote for her. He made a
very long face and pretended to be much shocked, but said he would like
to read it, so he took it and also her album, which she asked him to
write in. At night, on his way home, he stopped at our door and left
them both. When she looked in her album, she found this was what he had
written:
"Anna, when you have grown old and wear spectacles and a cap, remember
the boyish young man who saw your fine talents in 1859 and was certain
you would add culture to nature and become the pride of Canandaigua. Do
not forget also that no one deserves praise for anything done by others
and that your progress in wisdom and goodness will be watched by no one
more anxiously than by your true friend,
E. M. Morse."
I think she might as well have told Mr. Morse that the old journals were
as much hers as mine; but I think she likes to make out she is not as
good as she is. Sarah Foster helped us to do our arithmetic examples
to-day. She is splendid in mathematics.
Much to our surprise Bridget Flynn, who has lived with us so long, is
married. We didn't know she thought of such a thing, but she has gone.
Anna and I have learned how to make rice and cornstarch puddings. We
have a new girl in Bridget's place but I don't think she will do.
Grandmother asked her to-day if she seasoned the gravy and she said,
either she did or she didn't, she couldn't tell which. Grandfather says
he thinks she is a little lacking in the "upper story."
_June._--A lot of us went down to Sucker Brook this afternoon. Abbie
Clark was one and she told us some games to play sitting down on the
grass. We played "Simon says thumbs up" and then we pulled the leaves
off from daisies and said,
"Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief,
Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief,"
to see which we would marry. The last leaf tells the story. Anna's came
"rich man" every time and she thinks it is true because Eugene Stone has
asked to marry her and he is quite well off. She is 13 and he is 17. He
is going now to his home in St. Paul, Minn., but he is coming back for
her some day. Tom Eddy is going to be groomsman and Emma Wheeler
bridesmaid. They have all the arrangements made. She has not shown any
of Eugene Stone's notes to Grandmother yet for she does not think it is
worth while. Anna broke the seal on Tom Eddy's page in her mystic book,
although he wrote on it, "Not to be opened until December 8, 1859." He
says:
Dear Anna,--
I hope that in a few years I will see you and Stone living on the banks
of the Mississippi, in a little cottage, as snug as a bug in a rug,
living in peace, so that I can come and see you and have a good
time.--Yours,
Thos. C. Eddy."
Anna says if she does marry Eugene Stone and he forgets, after two or
three years to be as polite to her as he is now she shall look up at him
with her sweetest smile and say, "Miss Anna, won't you have a little
more sugar in your tea?" When I went to school this morning Juliet
Ripley asked, "Where do you think Anna Richards is now? Up in a cherry
tree in Dr. Cheney's garden." Anna loves cherries. We could see her from
the chapel window.
_June_ 7.--Alice Jewett took Anna all through their new house to-day
which is being built and then they went over to Mr. Noah T. Clarke's
partly finished house and went all through that. A dog came out of Cat
Alley and barked at them and scared Anna awfully. She said she almost
had a conniption fit but Emma kept hold of her. She is so afraid of
thunder and lightning and dogs.
Old Friend Burling brought Grandfather a specimen of his handwriting
to-day to keep. It is beautifully written, like copper plate. This is
the verse he wrote and Grandfather gave it to me to paste in my book of
extracts:
DIVINE LOVE.
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
Was the whole earth of parchment made,
Was every single stick a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could that scroll contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky.
Transcribed by William S. Burling, Canandaigua, 1859, in the 83rd year
of his age.
_Sunday, December_ 8, 1859.--Mr. E. M. Morse is our Sunday School
teacher now and the Sunday School room is so crowded that we go up into
the church for our class recitation. Abbie Clark, Fannie Gaylord and
myself are the only scholars, and he calls us the three Christian
Graces, faith, hope and charity, and the greatest of these is charity. I
am the tallest, so he says I am charity. We recite in Mr. Gibson's pew,
because it is farthest away and we do not disturb the other classes. He
gave us some excellent advice to-day as to what was right and said if we
ever had any doubts about anything we should never do it and should
always be perfectly sure we are in the right before we act. He gave us
two weeks ago a poem to learn by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It is an
apostrophe to God and very hard to learn. It is blank verse and has 85
lines in it. I have it committed at last and we are to recite it in
concert. The last two lines are, "Tell thou the silent sky and tell the
stars and tell yon rising sun, Earth with its thousand voices praises
God." Mr. Morse delivered a lecture in Bemis Hall last Thursday night.
The subject was, "You and I." It was splendid and he lent me the
manuscript afterwards to read. Dick Valentine lectured in the hall the
other night too. His subject was "Prejudice." There was some difference
in the lectures and the lecturers. The latter was more highly colored.
_Friday._--The older ladies of the town have formed a society for the
relief of the poor and are going to have a course of lectures in Bemis
Hall under their auspices to raise funds. The lecturers are to be from
the village and are to be: Rev. O. E. Daggett, subject, "Ladies and
Gentlemen"; Dr. Harvey Jewett, "The House We Live In"; Prof. F. E. R.
Chubbuck, "Progress"; Hon. H. W. Taylor, "The Empty Place"; Prof. E. G.
Tyler, "Finance"; Mr. N. T. Clark, "Chemistry"; E. M. Morse, "Graybeard
and His Dogmas." The young ladies have started a society, too, and we
have great fun and fine suppers. We met at Jennie Howell's to organize.
We are to meet once in two weeks and are to present each member with an
album bed quilt with all our names on when they are married. Susie
Daggett says she is never going to be married, but we must make her a
quilt just the same. Laura Chapin sang, "Mary Lindsey, Dear," and we got
to laughing so that Susie Daggett and I lost our equilibrium entirely,
but I found mine by the time I got home. Yesterday afternoon Grandfather
asked us if we did not want to go to ride with him in the big two seated
covered carriage which he does not get out very often. We said yes, and
he stopped for Miss Hannah Upham and took her with us. She sat on the
back seat with me and we rode clear to Farmington and kept up a brisk
conversation all the way. She told us how she became lady principal of
the Ontario Female Seminary in 1830. She was still telling us about it
when we got back home.
_December_ 23.--We have had a Christmas tree and many other attractions
in Seminary chapel. The day scholars and townspeople were permitted to
participate and we had a post office and received letters from our
friends. Mr. E. M. Morse wrote me a fictitious one, claiming to be
written from the north pole ten years hence. I will copy it in my
journal for I may lose the letter. I had some gifts on the Christmas
tree and gave some. I presented my teacher, Mr. Chubbuck, with two large
hemstitched handkerchiefs with his initials embroidered in a corner of
each. As he is favored with the euphonious name of Frank Emery Robinson
Chubbuck it was a work of art to make his initials look beautiful. I
inclosed a stanza in rhyme:
Amid the changing scenes of life
If any storm should rise,
May you ever have a handkerchief
To wipe your weeping eyes.
Here is Mr. Morse's letter:
North Pole, 10 _January_ 1869.
Miss Carrie Richards,
"My Dear Young Friend.--It is very cold here and the pole is covered
with ice. I climbed it yesterday to take an observation and arrange our
flag, the Stars and Stripes, which I hoisted immediately on my arrival
here, ten years ago. I thought I should freeze and the pole was so
slippery that I was in great danger of coming down faster than was
comfortable. Although this pole has been used for more than 6,000 years
it is still as good as new. The works of the Great Architect do not wear
out. It is now ten years since I have seen you and my other two
Christian Graces and I have no doubt of your present position among the
most brilliant, noble and excellent women in all America. I always knew
and recognized your great abilities. Nature was very generous to you all
and you were enjoying fine advantages at the time I last knew you. I
thought your residence with your Grandparents an admirable school for
you, and you and your sister were most evidently the best joy of their
old age. You certainly owe much to them. At the time that I left my
three Christian Graces, Mrs. Grundy was sometimes malicious enough to
say that they were injuring themselves by flirting. I always told the
old lady that I had the utmost confidence in the judgment and discretion
of my pupils and that they would be very careful and prudent in all
their conduct. I confessed that flirting was wrong and very injurious to
any one who was guilty of it, but I was very sure that you were not. I
could not believe that you would disappoint us all and become only
ordinary women, but that you would become the most exalted characters,
scorning all things unworthy of ladies and Christians and I was right
and Mrs. Grundy was wrong. When the ice around the pole thaws out I
shall make a flying visit to Canandaigua. I send you a tame polar bear
for a playfellow. This letter will be conveyed to you by Esquimaux
express.--Most truly yours,
E. M. Morse."
I think some one must have shown some verses that we girls wrote, to
Mrs. Grundy and made her think that our minds were more upon the young
men than they were upon our studies, but if people knew how much time we
spent on Paley's "Evidences of Christianity" and Butler's Analogy and
Kames' Elements of Criticism and Tytler's Ancient History and Olmstead's
Mathematical Astronomy and our French and Latin and arithmetic and
algebra and geometry and trigonometry and bookkeeping, they would know
we had very little time to think of the masculine gender.
1860
_New Year's Day._--We felt quite grown up to-day and not a little scared
when we saw Mr. Morse and Mr. Wells and Mr. Mason and Mr. Chubbuck all
coming in together to make a New Year's call. They made a tour of the
town. We did not feel so flustrated when Will Schley and Horace Finley
came in later. Mr. Oliver Phelps, Jr., came to call upon Grandmother.
Grandfather made a few calls, too.
_January_ 5.--Abbie Clark and I went up to see Miss Emma Morse because
it is her birthday. We call her sweet Miss Emma and we think Mr. Manning
Wells does, too. We went to William Wirt Howe's lecture in Bemis Hall
this evening. He is a very smart young man.
Anna wanted to walk down a little ways with the girls after school so
she crouched down between Helen Coy and Hattie Paddock and walked past
the house. Grandmother always sits in the front window, so when Anna
came in she asked her if she had to stay after school and Anna gave her
an evasive answer. It reminds me of a story I read, of a lady who told
the servant girl if any one called to give an evasive answer as she did
not wish to receive calls that day. By and by the door bell rang and the
servant went to the door. When she came back the lady asked her how she
dismissed the visitor. She said, "Shure ye towld me to give an evasive
answer, so when the man asked if the lady of the house was at home I
said, 'Faith! is your grandmother a monkey!'" We never say anything like
that to our "dear little lady," but we just change the subject and
divert the conversation into a more agreeable channel. To-day some one
came to see Grandmother when we were gone and told her that Anna and
some others ran away from school. Grandmother told Anna she hoped she
would never let any one bring her such a report again. Anna said she
would not, if she could possibly help it! I wonder who it was. Some one
who believes in the text, "Look not every man on his own things, but
every man also on the things of others." Grandfather told us to-night
that we ought to be very careful what we do as we are making history
every day. Anna says she shall try not to have hers as dry as some that
she had to learn at school to-day.
_February_ 9.--Dear Miss Mary Howell was married to-day to Mr.
Worthington, of Cincinnati.
_February_ 28.--Grandfather asked me to read Abraham Lincoln's speech
aloud which he delivered in Cooper Institute, New York, last evening,
under the auspices of the Republican Club. He was escorted to the
platform by David Dudley Field and introduced by William Cullen Bryant.
The _New York Times_ called him "a noted political exhorter and Prairie
orator." It was a thrilling talk and must have stirred men's souls.
_April_ 1.--Aunt Ann was over to see us yesterday and she said she made
a visit the day before out at Mrs. William Gorham's. Mrs. Phelps and
Miss Eliza Chapin also went and they enjoyed talking over old times when
they were young. Maggie Gorham is going to be married on the 25th to Mr.
Benedict of New York. She always said she would not marry a farmer and
would not live in a cobblestone house and now she is going to do both,
for Mr. Benedict has bought the farm near theirs and it has a
cobblestone house. We have always thought her one of the jolliest and
prettiest of the older set of young ladies.
_June._--James writes that he has seen the Prince of Wales in New York.
He was up on the roof of the Continental Fire Insurance building, out on
the cornice, and looked down on the procession. Afterwards there was a
reception for the Prince at the University Law School and James saw him
close by. He says he has a very pleasant youthful face. There was a ball
given for him one evening in the Academy of Music and there were 3,000
present. The ladies who danced with him will never forget it. They say
that he enters into every diversion which is offered to him with the
greatest tact and good nature, and when he visited Mount Vernon he
showed great reverence for the memory of George Washington. He attended
a literary entertainment in Boston, where Longfellow, Holmes, Emerson,
Thoreau, and other Americans of distinction were presented to him. He
will always be a favorite in America.
_June._--Mrs. Annie Granger asked Anna and me to come over to her house
and see her baby. We were very eager to go and wanted to hold it and
carry it around the room. She was willing but asked us if we had any
pins on us anywhere. She said she had the nurse sew the baby's clothes
on every morning so that if she cried she would know whether it was
pains or pins. We said we had no pins on us, so we stayed quite a while
and held little Miss Hattie to our heart's content. She is named for her
aunt, Hattie Granger. Anna says she thinks Miss Martha Morse will give
medals to her and Mary Daggett for being the most meddlesome girls in
school, judging from the number of times she has spoken to them to-day.
Anna is getting to be a regular punster, although I told her that
Blair's Rhetoric says that punning is not the highest kind of wit. Mr.
Morse met us coming from school in the rain and said it would not hurt
us as we were neither sugar nor salt. Anna said, "No, but we are
'lasses." Grandmother has been giving us sulphur and molasses for the
purification of the blood and we have to take it three mornings and then
skip three mornings. This morning Anna commenced going through some sort
of gymnastics and Grandmother asked her what she was doing, and she said
it was her first morning to skip.
Abbie Clark had a large tea-party this afternoon and evening--Seminary
girls and a few Academy boys. We had a fine supper and then played
games. Abbie gave us one which is a test of memory and we tried to learn
it from her but she was the only one who could complete it. I can write
it down, but not say it:
A good fat hen.
Two ducks and a good fat hen.
Three plump partridges, two ducks and a good fat hen.
Four squawking wild geese, three plump partridges, etc.
Five hundred Limerick oysters.
Six pairs of Don Alfonso's tweezers.
Seven hundred rank and file Macedonian horsemen drawn up in line of
battle.
Eight cages of heliogabalus sparrow kites.
Nine sympathetical, epithetical, categorical propositions.
Ten tentapherical tubes.
Eleven flat bottom fly boats sailing between Madagascar and Mount
Palermo.
Twelve European dancing masters, sent to teach the Egyptian mummies how
to dance, against Hercules' wedding day.
Abbie says it was easier to learn than the multiplication table. They
wanted some of us to recite and Abbie Clark gave us Lowell's poem, "John
P. Robinson, he, says the world'll go right if he only says Gee!" I gave
another of Lowell's poems, "The Courtin'." Julia Phelps had her guitar
with her by request and played and sang for us very sweetly. Fred
Harrington went home with her and Theodore Barnum with me.
_Sunday._--Frankie Richardson asked me to go with her to teach a class
in the colored Sunday School on Chapel Street this afternoon. I asked
Grandmother if I could go and she said she never noticed that I was
particularly interested in the colored race and she said she thought I
only wanted an excuse to get out for a walk Sunday afternoon. However,
she said I could go just this once. When we got up as far as the
Academy, Mr. Noah T. Clarke's brother, who is one of the teachers, came
out and Frank said he led the singing at the Sunday School and she said
she would give me an introduction to him, so he walked up with us and
home again. Grandmother said that when she saw him opening the gate for
me, she understood my zeal in missionary work. "The dear little lady,"
as we often call her, has always been noted for her keen discernment and
wonderful sagacity and loses none of it as she advances in years. Some
one asked Anna the other day if her Grandmother retained all her
faculties and Anna said, "Yes, indeed, to an alarming degree."
Grandmother knows that we think she is a perfect angel even if she does
seem rather strict sometimes. Whether we are 7 or 17 we are children to
her just the same, and the Bible says, "Children obey your parents in
the Lord for this is right." We are glad that we never will seem old to
her. I had the same company home from church in the evening. His home is
in Naples.
_Monday._--This morning the cook went to early mass and Anna told
Grandmother she would bake the pancakes for breakfast if she would let
her put on gloves. She would not let her, so Hannah baked the cakes. I
was invited to Mary Paul's to supper to-night and drank the first cup of
tea I ever drank in my life. I had a very nice time and Johnnie Paul
came home with me.
Imogen Power and I went down together Friday afternoon to buy me a
Meteorology. We are studying that and Watts on the Mind, instead of
Philosophy.
_Tuesday._--I went with Fanny Gaylord to see Mrs. Callister at the hotel
to-night. She is so interested in all that we tell her, just like "one
of the girls."
[Illustration: The Old Canandaigua Academy]
I was laughing to-day when I came in from the street and Grandmother
asked me what amused me so. I told her that I met Mr. and Mrs. Putnam on
the street and she looked so immense and he so minute I couldn't help
laughing at the contrast. Grandmother said that size was not everything,
and then she quoted Cowper's verse:
"Were I so tall to reach the skies or grasp the ocean in a span,
I must be measured by my soul, the mind is the stature of the man."
I don't believe that helps Mr. Putnam out.
_Friday._--We went to Monthly Concert of prayer for Foreign Missions
this evening. I told Grandmother that I thought it was not very
interesting. Judge Taylor read the _Missionary Herald_ about the
Madagascans and the Senegambians and the Terra del Fuegans and then
Deacon Tyler prayed and they sang "From Greenland's Icy Mountains" and
took up a collection and went home. She said she was afraid I did not
listen attentively. I don't think I did strain every nerve. I believe
Grandmother will give her last cent to Missions if the Boards get into
worse straits than they are now.
In Latin class to-day Anna translated the phrase Deo Volente "with
violence," and Mr. Tyler, who always enjoys a joke, laughed so, we
thought he would fall out of his chair. He evidently thought it was the
best one he had heard lately.